• He is often called the most famous pioneer and frontier hero there ever was. He is especially known for his exploration of the wilderness of Kentucky, USA.He was born in Pennsylvania, USA on November 2, 1734 to a family of Quakers. When he was young, he never had a chance to go to school and learn to read or write. By 1750, when he was 16 his family moved to North Carolina, where He spent most of his time hunting. When he was 23, he got married, and eventually had 10 kids.
  • In 1769, when he was 35, he went with John Finley and his brother to Kentucky. Of course, this was before Kentucky was an American state. In fact, it was seven years before the United States even became a country!
  • It had always been his dream to go to Kentucky. Contrary to some popular belief, he never wore a coonskin cap, and when he went to Kentucky, he wore a black felt cap.He hunted and explored in Kentucky for two years. He was captured and released by Indians in Kentucky, but only for a brief period of time. Boone always respected Indians, but nonetheless, he was captured four times by them. He then built a cabin in Kentucky, and moved his family there.
  • In 1775, He led an expedition that blazed a trail through the Cumberland Gap in Virginia and into Kentucky. This trail came to be known as the **Wilderness Trail**, and thousands of settlers followed it into Kentucky. It was one of the most important trails of the early United States. It was not an entirely new trail. The Indians had been using a similar trail through the natural gap in the mountains (Cumberland Gap) for hundreds of years. Boone's expedition made agreements with the Indians for using the trail, and Boone also cut 200 miles of new trail into Kentucky territory.
  • After Boone was captured again, and then accepted as a member of the Indian community, he pretended that he loved Indian life, but he still waited for just the perfect time to escape. One day, the Indians decided to attack the fort near where he lived. He escaped to warn his people. The Indians used very clever warfare, but the weather was against them and they withdrew.
  • Daniel Boone was rich beyond belief, and he owned over 100,000 acres of land, but lawyers sued him and took his land, because he had not acquired the legal right to the land. Daniel Boone always wanted to be in areas that were basically unpopulated, so in 1799, he moved west again, into Missouri. He said that Kentucky was getting too crowded for him. When he was so old that he could not even aim his rifle straight, he set traps to catch animals. He died on September 26, 1820.
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